1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an operation and control method for various information from an input device associated with a computer system. Furthermore, the present invention relates to an improved control method allowing a plurality of locators to be utilized in commonly used systems which have been inherently designed to be equipped with a single locator. More specifically, the present invention provides an improved control method and device for effectively performing various operations of a computer through a plurality of locators such as mouse, tablet, digitizer, pen, and the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In this specification, to easily understand the present invention without any confusions, the terminology "locator" represents a location input device such as a pointing device and a tablet (digitizer). More detail, "pointing device" represents a single pointing device such as a mouse and a pen for pointing a single position (or a single coordinate position), and "tablet or digitizer" represents a specific device composed of such pointing device and a position detecting plate. It is commonly understood that "tablet" is relatively compact rather than "digitizer". According to these definitions, a single tablet may be equipped with one or more pointing devices.
Conventionally, in a computer equipped with a locator such as a tablet or a pointing device (a pen or a mouse), when an operator performs input operation through this locator, this computer requires a specific software to interface the input signal from the locator into a regular information signal belonging to a main operating system of the computer. Thus the operating system operates the input signal to transmit to its application program or to display the input information through a display device associated with the computer. This software to interface the input signal from the locator is generally called "device driver".
A single pointing device, for example a specific type of mouse, requires its exclusive device driver, but an all-round type interface adapted for any types has not yet provided. In order to overcome the above described demerit, an operating system may be additionally provided with a sub-operating system for such interface operation. This sub-operating system is typically activated by API (Application Program Interface) which operates as a function call from an application to an operating system to perform various operations such as initialization of mouse, reading operation of mouse position and control operation of mouse. This operating system includes another sub-operating system to support various operations of a key-board which is an ordinary input device associated with a commonly used computer system. Adaptability and extendibility of this conventional computer for any applications depends on capability and combination of these sub-operating systems.
Anyway, these conventional systems have been adapted for only one pointing device, particularly, a single mouse. Thus it is required to convert the information input from a tablet (or a pen attached to this tablet) into corresponding mouse-generated information through a tablet device driver (hereinafter, referred to "tablet driver") to supply the converted information to the operating system and then to the current application program.
As discussed above, conventional operating system and application program have been designed to be adapted for only single pointing device or tablet, not for multiple pointing devices and tablets. On the other hand, in recently used personal computer systems, both software and hardware have been modified to be adapted for multi task processing. For example, a plurality of application programs are simultaneously activated and frequently switched among them, and their data can be interchanged as necessary. According to this tendency, some multi-tasking interfaces such as graphical user interface have been also developed and improved. Many conventional computer systems adapted for a single input device can not satisfy user's demand.
For example, in the case of operating a plurality of application programs such as CAD (Computer Aided Design) in response to respective tablet-input signals, a single tablet associated with a conventional computer system is served for two or more application programs and must be also manually switched to transmit the tablet-input signal to another application program on the same occasion of switching the current application program to another. Every switching operation always requires to initialize and reset the tablet itself. Furthermore, in the case of this single tablet being not commonly applied to plural application programs, this tablet must be replaced by another whenever the current application program is switched to another.
On the other hand, even when a single application program is adapted to plural tablets, many conventional computer systems can not respond the multi task processing request from this single application program. Therefore, such conventional computer system can provide only information from a single tablet even when this single application program requests respective information from plural tablets. Many conventional computer systems are not equipped with means for selecting a required one from plural tablets. In order to overcome the above described demerits, it is necessary to drastically change the whole operating system ready set in the computer for a new system. This will result in high cost and complicated works.